Pirate Bay Co-Founder Lands In Sweden, Immediately Charged By Police

After being deported from Cambodia yesterday Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svatholm is now back on Swedish soil. The big question now concerns the motivations of the authorities in having him brought back to Sweden. It now seems almost certain that they want Gottfrid for more than just the Pirate Bay case. TorrentFreak is informed that upon his arrival the 27-year-old was immediately charged by police in connection with another alleged crime.

After a stormy and somewhat confusing twelve days, Pirate Bay co-founder Gottfrid Svartholm was finally deported from Cambodia last night.

“We deported him out of the country in accordance with the order from the ministry of interior,” confirmed Chhour Kimny, chief of the country’s immigration police.

Gottfrid’s Cambodian visa had expired so this was used by the Cambodian authorities to kick him out. However, if Gottfrid was being deported he should have had a choice of which country to go to, but this appears to have been denied.

Sok Sam Oeun, executive director of the Cambodian Defenders Project, said he was resigned to the fact that Gottfrid would now be sent back to Sweden.

“Now it’s too late to intervene,” he said.

As planned the 27-year-old was sent first to Thailand accompanied by Swedish officials. There he boarded a Thai Airways plane where he was met by two Swedish police officers.

After an 11 hour flight the Boeing 747 touched down at Stockholm’s Arlanda Airport at 06:50 this morning. A source close to the situation told TorrentFreak that Gottfrid’s mother Kristina Svartholm tried to meet her son but was denied access by the Swedish authorities.

Gottfrid was taken into custody by the Swedish probation service, but not before yet another twist in the tale. Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde has been suggesting all along that there is more to Gottfrid’s arrest than just hauling him back to Sweden to serve his copyright sentence. Today he appears to have been proven right.

“I’m upset that it’s been lies from the Swedish foreign ministry all along about why Gottfrid was kidnapped,” Sunde told TorrentFreak this morning.

“They have said all along that [Gottfrid’s arrest] was about the TPB case, yet the first people who greeted him [on landing in Sweden] were police handing him a charge. We all know this was why they’ve been asking questions about Gottfrid even before he appeared on the [Interpol] wanted list.”

Gottfrid was questioned at the airport but his lawyer Ola Salomonsson was definitely not present. This means that if he had representation at all it would have been someone nominated by the Swedish authorities.

The nature of the police charge against Gottfrid is not yet clear, although the hack of IT company Logica seems a likely candidate. But long-time friend Peter Sunde worries that Gottfrid’s connections to Wikileaks (he helped to host the whistleblower site some time ago) might become an issue.

“It’s quite insane that just the past year there’s been two people associated with WikiLeaks on the Interpol wanted list. Two people – so far,” he said.

Update: Swedish authorities have confirmed that “a man arrested in Cambodia and subsequently sent to Sweden” was arrested this morning in connection with the Logica hack.